Seaway Mall

History

Seaway Mall opened on April 23, 1975 with anchor stores Woolco, Kmart, Miracle Food Mart, a movie theater and 60 stores. An expansion in the late 1980s added a Sears store, which opened for business in 1989. Around this time, Miracle Food Mart was sold to A&P Canada, and the Seaway Mall store was shuttered. This space was converted into a new mall wing, which currently features a Bulk Barn, and Dollarama. The late 1990s saw both of the mall's discount department stores change their names. Woolco was converted into a Walmart, and Kmart was converted into a Zellers after Kmart's decision to exit the Canadian retail market. Walmart relocated to a larger east of Seaway Mall in the early 2000s. Zellers relocated into this space, while the former Kmart/Zellers store was reconfigured into several smaller stores such as Winners and Shoppers Drug Mart. Target bought the lease to the mall's Zellers store, along with many other Zellers stores across the country during its expansion into Canada. Target opened its doors in the summer of 2013. With the opening of Target, this made Seaway Mall one of the few malls to have featured three of the largest discount department stores from the United States: Walmart, Target and Kmart, operate in the same building at different points in time. In October 2012, Sport Chek opened up in the mall near Target. In January 2015, Target announced it had filed for bankruptcy, and would discontinue all Canadian operations . Target closed its doors on April 1, 2015, leaving a vacancy in the mall's largest department store space. This was followed by the closure of the mall's Sears on September 30, 2015. Currently, the Sears is a location of discount chain Hart.